


won't stop running till we reach the sun

by boos



Category: Majo no Takkyuubin | Kiki's Delivery Service, SKAM (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Magic, Alternate Universe - Magical Realism, Angst, Domestic Fluff, Fluff, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Magical Realism, Slow Burn
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-04-11
Updated: 2017-04-27
Packaged: 2018-10-17 11:52:36
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 16,689
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10593456
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/boos/pseuds/boos
Summary: Isak learns how to do magic, moves to a new city, and falls in love with a boy all in a matter of months. It's all a bit overwhelming.(a loose kiki's delivery service au)





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> hiya! i got a few things 2 say:  
> \- kiki's delivery service is my fav movie of all time and i wanted to write happy fun sun boyfriends w/ a little bit of angst (bc who can i kid i love the Sads) and magic so that's why this fic exists  
> \- this first chapter has like no Even and is all exposition and i kno it might be boring but i'm gonna work on happy fun sun boyfriends very soon! stay tuned  
> \- i changed the tradition of leaving ur home town when ur a magic user to being 16 rather than 13 bc that makes more sense  
> \- this story takes a lot of liberties w/ kiki's world and i'm just trying to figure it out along the way while combining magic and creating a reasonable story 4 isak!  
> \- did u guys see the clips of 4.1 because Holy Fuck Kill Me Softly 
> 
> title is from Woodland by The Paper Kites
> 
> i am very american and not at all Norwegian so if i mess up on that front somehow (even tho this fic is like. magical au) sorry! please tell me (y)
> 
> i hope you enjoy!! :')

For as long as Isak can remember, he’s heard stories about his mother.

The townfolk have always recalled to him about how amazing she was as a young witch, how her psychic powers were attuned, how her palm reading always came true. For a small number of years Isak even got to watch his mother’s magic happen right before his very eyes. He would follow the way her forefinger traced palm lines and the way she squeezed her eyes shut tight right before a reading, like she was trying her hardest to connect to the person in front of her.

Isak has not seen the lady talked about in those tales for years. The mother he has now is a broken version of that woman that Isak heard all about, that one he knew for just a short amount of time. Instead, now he hasn't seen magic in years; his mother mumbles about it sometimes, but the word _magic_ is always synonymous with the word _Devil_ in his household now.

So when Eva brings it up one day, tells him, “You’ll be sixteen soon,” with a lilt to her voice, Isak looks at her with a furrow in his brow.

“Yes? And?” he asks her.

They’re sitting in Isak’s big backyard, smack dab in the middle of the wild grass that hasn’t been mowed in years. His father and mother are making dinner with the kitchen windows open and Isak can smell chicken slowly roasting, can hear the soft chop of a knife on the cutting board. Eva has overalls on that are being stained with green splotches from the grass, and Isak is pretty sure she crushes a ladybug when she sits up suddenly with her facial expression a mixture of horror and frustration.

“ _And_? What do you mean _and_!"Eva practically yells in his ear, "When you turn sixteen you leave to find another town to be a wizard in, you dummy. Remember?"

Isak sighs, and lays back further into the tall grass as though he's hoping it might swallow him up. “Oh. I mean, I don’t know. I haven’t thought about that in years. I haven’t even practiced magic or flown a broom in years.”

This is partly a lie. Although talk of magic or any type magical item has been banned from his house for years at the request of his mother, _of course_ he’s thought about it. How do you forget things like that? It’s like someone came into his life and showed him this great, powerful thing and consequently took it away from him and told him to utter another word about it ever again. How do you just not talk about it? However, it's still partly true. He hasn’t done any actual form of magic in years; Isak can barely remember when the last time he tried to fly a broom was.

Eva’s face falls. “Isak, you know witches and wizards are rare and that’s why you have to go. It’s tradition. That’s how your mom came here. That’s why you're here right now.”

Before Isak even thinks of how to respond, he looks up at the sky and the way the sun gets filtered through the leaves of the green, green trees. When they were kids, he and Eva used to play pretend under these trees about the life Isak would lead when he turned sixteen, how he would bring Eva along with him and they would fly on his broom to somewhere that was more exciting than the small village they’d lived in their entire lives. Now they're sixteen and Isak gave up on magic such a long time ago and they both know that Eva can’t come with him anymore. She could visit, of course, but she’s just human in the end. Eva has a life of her own, Eva has friends, and Eva certainly doesn’t have the weight of tradition on her shoulders.

“Eva… I mean, I don’t think I can really be counted as a wizard anymore. I don’t think I’d really help with the ‘continuation of magic users’ or whatever they say.” Isak tells her, flipping a small grass blade between his fingers. 

“You still have magic in there somewhere.” Eva tells him, her smile sweet and tucked into her face. “Even when you annoy me or pull my hair, I see it in there.”

Isak laughs at her. “I don’t know what you mean, I’m never annoying.” he says and smiles up at her for a moment before he continues, "Can we stop talking about this?"

Strings of Eva’s red hair fall in front of her face as she smiles down at him once more. This smile seems like it is more full of things like pity, sadness, and other things that jumble up in Isak's chest uncomfortably. “You should go,” she says softly, “At least go for me.” 

Isak huffs, trying to ignore the sinking feeling this conversation's giving him. “Please. You never repaid me for that time I wrote your end of the year research paper, and yet you ask me to move across the country for you?”

Eva flicks his head with her fingers. “Not across the country, you dork. Just somewhere new. Come on, I need somewhere I can convince my mom to let me vacation at over summer.”

Isak scrunches his nose up at her, and Eva laughs. They stay like that in the grass for a while: Eva playing with the ladybugs she finds as her red radio playing Susanne Sundfør, and Isak trying to void all of his thoughts about what being sixteen might mean for him. He had realized a couple months ago that his birthday was coming up and that it was _the_ birthday, but he had been hard at work repressing all thoughts of what might happen. It was so easy then, but now Eva’s brought it up, it seems like every thought he pushed to the back of his mind unfurls suddenly and there's barely enough time to figure out what any of them mean.

While he knows his parents don’t really want him to go - as any parent doesn't want their child to leave home - he knows his father will still at least expect it. He also knows he will seem like a failure of a son if he stays, and that the whole village will think him a disappointment. But Isak is also sure he hasn’t felt the thrall of magic in years, not since his mother would take his hand and try to teach him all the hand lines when he was a child.

Then sometimes he will think about what if he _did_ leave. If Isak’s being honest, it’s not like he has much to leave behind. A mother who he takes care of more than the other way around, a father who hovers around the house with an apprehensive face like he’s not sure he should be here, and then Eva. While he loves Eva with his whole heart, it's also worth noting that he has no other real friends beside her.

He’d leave behind his big backyard, the next door neighbor who always brings cookies around and asks him how his cat is doing, the Sunday market that Isak always enjoys going to.

In his mind, Isak imagines a bustling city, full of new people he could meet and bigger Sunday markets he could go to. Eva could come and visit him. His mother and father could call him.

Maybe it wouldn’t be so bad.

“Maybe I’ll think about it.” Isak says after a while of silence, “The whole leaving on a broom and going thing.”

Eva smiles at him, joy twisting around the corners of her grin. “I think you’d be great.”

It’s that moment that Jonas chooses to make his grand entrance by pouncing onto Isak’s stomach.

Isak lets out a surprised _oof!_ sound and looks to see his black cat standing triumphantly on his body.

“Jonas!” Isak yells, “Next time tell me before you just jump on me out of the tall grass like that!”

Jonas scoffs, as much as a cat might scoff, and sprawls along Isak’s chest. “You’re just mad that I scared you.” Jonas teases.

Isak rolls his eyes as Eva reaches down to scratch Jonas’ head.

“Jonas is so cute.” Eva remarks as Jonas purrs, and then starts talking to him like normal people talk to animals when they’re not expecting a reply, “Jonas, don’t you think Isak should leave on his sixteenth birthday to find a new town to be a wizard in? The two of you would have so much fun.” 

Jonas preens under Eva’s attention and talks to Isak rather than to Eva. “Isak, I’ll only go if you bring Eva along with us, like how you guys always talked about as kids. She’d be much more fun than you.”

“What did he say?” Eva asks, looking at Isak.

“He said you were cooler than I was.”

Eva laughs and scoops Jonas from off of Isak’s body. “He’s right about that.” she says, and cuddles Jonas close to her chest. His black, curly fur is in stark contrast to her light blue overalls and red hair.

Isak can hear Jonas’ muffled voice go, “I think I’m suffocating, Isak. But also, if I have to die, what a heavenly way to go.”

Isak ignores the comment in favor in trying to suppress his snicker. 

__

Isak, against his better judgement, does think about it. In fact, he can’t stop thinking about it. It’s all Eva’s fault.

That night, when Eva has dinner with his family, she brings it up at the table like it's no big deal. While Isak’s Dad responds to it well enough, just like Isak thought he might, now every conversation Isak has with his Dad ends with, _have you thought about whether you’re leaving or not? I know you don't feel confident about your abilities, but…_

Isak’s a little worried with how urgently his father wants to push him out of the house, but it's only when Isak talks to him about possibly staying here does he see the concern in his father’s eyes. Most parents want more for their child than a slightly unsatisfying country life with one friend and a cat.

His mother, on the other hand, doesn’t bring it up past the conversation they had at the dinner table with Eva. Even when Eva had brought it up, his mother had just stared at the peas on one side of her plate with her fork tightly squeezed in one hand. She did not say one word. 

But Isak didn’t really know what her silence meant, and he still doesn’t. Her face had been so impassive and her eyes had been glazed over and far-off.

It’s only when Isak goes to check on his mom one afternoon does she bring it up again.

It's been a couple weeks since he and Eva first talked about it, and his birthday came and went. His father watches Isak everyday like there's a ticking time bomb above his head that he has to answer for, and it makes Isak more anxious than he'd like to admit. 

Isak’s just gotten home from school when he notices how silent the house is. Isak, unwinding his scarf, knows that his Mom must still be in bed. He takes off his shoes and unbuttons his jacket, shedding all of his warm clothes until he’s just in his shirt and jeans.

His feet fall soft on the wooden stairs as he navigates the darkness of his house, pausing to open the windows in the hall. He knocks softly on his parents’ bedroom door before he opens it slightly ajar.

“Mama?” he asks quietly into the darkness of the room.

When there’s no reply, Isak treads carefully inside. The room is plunged in darkness from the thick curtains being drawn heavily over the french doors, and his mother is bundled up under the covers disguised as a lump in the bed.

Isak walks to the french doors and opens the curtains a little bit to let some natural light in; this rouses something of a moan from his mother. He goes to her bedside and sits, and after a beat of silence, he slides the covers down just a bit from her face.

“Mama, wake up. It’s 3 in the afternoon.” Isak tells her. He shakes her arm lightly in an attempt to wake her.

His mother opens one eye and looks up at him. Instead of moving, she just lays there. Isak sighs.

“Do you want water?” he asks, taking the glass bottle of water she has on her bedside and opening it.

He hears his mother give a sigh of her own and fully draw herself from sleep. She sits up, blinking, with strings of her hair matted against her face. Her cheek has pillow creases pressed into it and she has eye bags sunk far under her eyes, despite the fact she’s been sleeping the whole day. She brushes the strands of her hair back and takes the water Isak offers to her.

As he waits for her to take a few sips, Isak looks away from her face and instead toward the french doors. He can see the green trees from here.

“Isak,” his mother says in a quiet voice.

Isak hums and turns his head back around to face his mother. “Yes?” he asks.

Suddenly – so fast, like something snaps – her face crumples and her eyes well up with tears. “You can’t go. You can’t leave even though you've turned sixteen.”

Isak, instead of replying, grinds his teeth together and seals his lips. He suddenly wishes he hadn’t come into this room to try and wake her up at all.

She continues, “You can’t. You can’t leave me. You can’t be persuaded by that _evil_ lifestyle. I know it all too well Isak – you know I do, you know I was one of them too, once. I know what it’s like, and it’s not good.” She shakes her head fervently.

Isak wants to argue that the only time she was ever happy was when she used her magic to help people. Once she stopped and started claiming she found God, that’s when she started napping until 3 p.m. every day and having frequent outbursts that ended in her crying. 

“It’s bad Isak. Magic is the Devil’s work.” his mother tells him, and her face crumples even more as tears slip down her face. “He took hold of me for so many years and made me do things no one should do. It’s unnatural.” 

She practically sobs the words out at the end and she keeps staring at Isak with this desperate look in her eyes, like it will kill her if he even leaves her bedside.

Isak grinds his teeth together one more time before he releases the pressure and says, probably with a little too much force, “Watching you do magic was the most natural thing I’ve ever seen you do. All you did was help people, Mama.”

She responds like she’s been shot in the heart, her voice raising to a shriek as tears just fall, fall, and fall. “Isak, you can’t submit to it! I did so many – I – you can’t! You must stay here with me and your father and never think about magic again. I can’t have you get hurt, I can’t have you be controlled by those things. You must stay here. You must stay here. You must stay here.” As she repeats this line, she grabs a hold of his wrists with her warm, soft hands and shakes them.

“I can’t. I’m sorry.” Isak whispers, his voice cracking in the middle of the words as he extracts his hands from his mother's grasp. Suddenly, the decision is the easiest one in the world. Suddenly, he is telling his mother that he will be leaving before he even really confessed it to himself. He can’t stay here for this anymore, and he can’t become his mother’s son.

She wails at that, wails and wails as he walks out of the room shaking. She yells for him to come back as he walks down the stairs and out the door. Screams for him as he’s running down the streets of the village to Eva’s house. 

When he shows up at Eva’s door panting like he’s run a marathon, he realizes he’s only in his socks, shirt, and pants. When she opens it, he blubbers something about his mom and magic before asking to come inside. Eva frowns but opens the door wider and doesn’t ask about his red-rimmed eyes. She hugs him, though, holds him hard, and offers him a blanket to wrap around himself.

A couple hours later, after they’ve finished their fifth cable television show that Eva keeps making him binge watch, Isak tells her, “I think I’m going to leave.”

Eva turns toward him and waits for an explanation. When one doesn't come, she touches her socked toes with his under the blanket they’re sharing on the couch. “What made you change your mind?” She asks.

Isak sits there and stares at the family pictures on Eva’s wall. Isak thinks his own house used to have pictures like this too, once. He honestly wants to tell her, _I don’t know_ , because that’s such an easy answer, isn’t it? So much easier than explaining the sludge of emotions inside of his chest.

“I guess I want to help people. Like how my mom used to. And I… I don’t want to be like her. I love her, but I want to do magic again. I want to remember what it feels like.” Isak doesn’t need to glance at Eva’s face to know that it has suddenly fallen with concern.

“Whatever your mom said to you before you came over here… Do you want to talk about it?” Eva asks.

Isak swallows and shakes his head _no_. “I’ve got more reasons too. I think I want to go to a city. I’m tired of being stuck in a town where I only have one friend and everyone else ignores me.” He looks over at Eva then and smiles as much as his inner turmoil will let him. “No offense.”

Eva grins back. “Don’t worry, none taken, I always knew you secretly hated me.”

Isak gives a weak laugh back. “Maybe there are other people out there beside my cat and my childhood best friend who might like me.”

Eva rests her head on the back of the couch and smiles at Isak, endeared. “I think there might be. I’ll miss you though, you know.”

This statement makes Isak want to cry all of sudden, it feels like the final straw that will break and open the floodgates, but he bites it back and looks at Eva. “I’ll miss you too. But you’ll come see me for summer, right?”

“Oh, of course.” Eva tells him with such vigor it makes him laugh, and then she asks, “When do you think you’ll leave?”

Isak gives a trembling smile. “I was thinking, maybe, tonight.”

With the way Eva groans after Isak says that, it’s a miracle she puts up with him at all.

__

His dad is ecstatic that Isak’s made the decision to go, but not-so-ecstatic that Isak wants to do it so last minute.

“I don’t know if that’s such a good idea.” his Dad says, his mouth twisting down in a grimace, “Especially with the argument you had with your Mother today.” 

Isak taps down the urge to roll his eyes. “It was barely an argument. She just cried at me about how the Devil’s going to take over my body.” he tells his Father, trying to seem dismissive as possible.

Somehow, Isak’s dad’s grimace twists even sadder. 

“Isak…” he trails off.

Eva chimes in from behind Isak as her position of moral support. “Mr. Valtersen, I really think Isak should go tonight. He really wants to. I don’t think delaying it will make anybody more… accepting of the idea.”

Isak reaches his hand back and squeezes Eva’s hand in solidarity. 

Isak’s dad looks at him for minute, like he’s trying to find something inside of Isak that will give him the answer he needs.

“I mean… I guess tonight works. I’ll have to tell your mother, and then the rest of the town, so we can all send you off.”

Isak holds his tongue on a comment about how he doesn’t think that many people will show up. Instead he nods, and says, “Alright. Thanks Dad, thank you so much.”

His Dad sighs, but pulls him into a hug. “I’ll miss you.” he says into Isak’s hair.

“I’ll miss you too.” Isak says into his shoulder.

__

Jonas is fucking pissed about the decision.

“Isak! You have to warn me about these life-altering things before they happen!” Jonas meows angrily at him.

Isak is on his bedroom floor, furiously packing a few clothes into his travel bag like his life depends on it. He figures his Dad can mail him the rest of his stuff later. “I told you I was thinking about it.” Isak replies.

“Uh, thinking about something and actually doing it are two very different things.”

Isak scoffs and looks up at Jonas from where he is laying on the bed. “What have you got to do around here that’s so important?”

Jonas stretches his long limbs as he moves to stand up. “I think the real matter of this situation is that you don’t tell me things like you used to. Now, you have all of these internal debates without consulting me.”

Isak throws a pair of his boxers onto Jonas and Jonas’ claws scrape against the wooden flooring as he tries to flee the oncoming clothing item. 

__

Isak’s honestly surprised at how many people end up coming to send him off.

Quite a few people from school come, even if they're people he doesn’t talk to anymore beside a friendly conversations in class here and there. Then of course Eva’s there, and she’s brought Ingrid and their group of friends. Most of the villagers living on their street come too, and even a few of Isak’s teachers who live nearby. It feels weird for Isak to think they’re all here for him.

His Mom watches people gather with a stony face from the rocking chair they’ve pulled outside for her to sit on. She’s wrapped in a lovely patterned shawl, one Isak’s sure hasn’t seen the light of day in a long time, while his Dad is running around frantically offering people the few snacks they have and making sure Isak’s got everything he needs to leave.

Truth be told: Isak is nervous as shit. He tells Jonas as much from living room window, where they're watching everybody gather around and wait for Isak’s grand departure.

Jonas yawns – even though Isak doesn’t know why, as Jonas sleeps all the time – and replies, “You’ll be fine. I’ll be there.”

“I mean – I don’t know. Maybe I shouldn’t do this. Maybe Mom was right and staying here is the best thing for me. I’ll have Eva and the Sunday market and cable T.V.”

Jonas looks back at him, entirely unamused. “If you think you can tell me that we’re leaving and then that we’re not all in a span of a few hours, you are fucking wrong.” Then his big eyes soften. “But for real, Isak, of course this is going to be scary. But I think we both know that there’s not a lot for you here and that this is an opportunity for you to start over and find something better.”

“What if we don’t?” Isak asks, his voice soft as he looks through the sheer white curtains and out into the yard. “What if wherever we go everybody hates me and calls me a freak for doing magic?”

“Then we leave and find a different place. Not everyone holds the same philosophies as your mother, Isak.” Jonas tells him, padding along the sill of the window and then jumping down. “Come on, there’s a whole crowd outside to watch you spectacularly fail at flying a broom for the first time in years.”

Isak laughs weakly, and despite his nervousness, he follows Jonas outside.

More than anything, Isak sorely wishes Jonas wasn’t right in the broom aspect. Isak hasn’t flown a broom since he was a kid, and even then that was only to learn; his mom had her religious crisis in the middle of teaching him, so he never really finished learning how to fly.

Throughout the years, Isak would sometimes venture to the backyard shed to find his mom’s broom and hold it in his hands to feel the weight of it, but he never tried to fly it. He’s not sure what he thought he would get out of holding it. Maybe a better understanding of his Mother, or maybe somehow by kismet he would attain the skill to fly it.

Now, Isak is standing in front of thirty-something people with that same backyard shed broom in his hand and he’s got no idea how this is going to go.

Everyone wishes him a goodbye, but Eva’s is the longest and the only one that really causes Isak’s heart to break. She cries into his shoulder and hugs him hard. When they pull apart, she sniffles and holds her red radio out to him.

“For the journey.” she tells him and hugs him one last time with her arms securely around his neck.

He hugs his father and kisses his mother on the cheek goodbye. His mother barely acknowledges him, but she has a soft stream of tears flowing down each cheek.

Isak kneels down in front of her and says, “Mama, I know you think I’m doing the wrong thing, but I promise I’ll be good. I promise everything will be okay.”

Her face is turned toward the side and she does not tilt it back toward him or say anything as her son squeezes her hand one final time.

Everybody starts waving goodbye as Isak heads in front of them, toward the clearing, with his broom in hand. Isak opens the flap of his satchel bag slung around his shoulder and Jonas dutifully jumps into it, his landing padded by the clothes Isak has haphazardly stuck inside for his journey.

Isak throws his leg around the other side of the broom, and folds his hands tightly near the front. He lets out a deep-seated breath as he stares at the sky that’s just now turning to dusk.

“Isak, please don’t fuck this up.” he hears Jonas say from his satchel. “Eva’s watching us. I think I’d die from embarrassment if you crashed us into a tree.”

Somehow, this is enough to tug a smile onto Isak’s face and have some weight be shaved off his chest.

“I can leave you behind, you know.” Isak tells him.

He hears Jonas huff as he takes off running and then – suddenly, miraculously, he’s in the air, just like when he was a kid.

They do almost crash into a tree, but Isak tries to assure Jonas that Eva definitely didn’t see it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> last thing i gotta say is: can't believe i made jonas the cat  
> imagining him as a cat for some reason makes it Really Hard to write him like Jonas and also writing a cat so it swears is Weird. but i guess this is my karma for making him the cat
> 
> also important for me to note: i had a lot of trouble writing Isak's mom because i didn't want to paint her in a light that made it seem like religion and mental illness are inherently bad things that make people mean and terrible. however there is no way at this point that i can set up her conflict w/ isak without having that light on it because this fic is from Isak's point of view and the way Isak deals with and internalizes his mother's problems starts off inherently problematic. ANYWAY MY POINT IS it will be resolved later in the chapters in a not shitty way


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thank u all for the kind words + kudos!!!!! i don't know how to express how grateful i am beside saying thank u!!!!! thank you so much!
> 
> i am currently on spring break and instead of doing anything useful i am just writing this fic lmao. but that also means i'll probably be updating pretty frequently for this week and then we will see how school ruins me + my motivation for writing
> 
> \- new 4.1 clip: uh i love the balloon squad and i l o v e sana
> 
> i feel like this chap is kind of weak but i hope u still enjoy reading! hope ur having a good day!

Not even an hour after they’ve left does Jonas start getting restless and asks, “So… when do you think we’re going to find a place to crash?”

Isak’s hooked Eva’s red radio onto the end of his broomstick and he’s got old 80s classics softly playing from it, although sometimes it’s hard to hear over the wind. Jonas though – Jonas climbs up onto Isak’s shoulder and curls around his neck just so he can yell in Isak’s ear about how he doesn’t want to be here anymore. No wind will mute his whining.

“I don’t know.” Isak mutters, squinting his eyes against the wind. It doesn’t stop them from watering a bit though. “We’ll find it when we find it.

Jonas mewls. “Isak, I don’t want to be flying on this broom with no food and in the cold for three days straight.”

Even though Jonas can’t see it, Isak rolls his eyes. “Would you stop?” he asks snottily, “I’m just… I don’t know where we’re going yet, I just want to go to a city.”

“So when we find a city we’ll stop?” Jonas asks and tilts his head down. Below them is the sprawling countryside that the two of them have lived in their entire lives and the green farm hills show no signs of stopping in the distance. Jonas sighs, “Better settle in, I guess.”

Isak ignores Jonas as he crawls his way back into Isak’s satchel. Instead Isak focuses on flying.

Isak is extremely surprised at how natural flying feels to him, especially considering his Mother never finished teaching him how. Being on a broom feels natural, and even though it sounds stupid, flying makes him feel free. Not even Jonas’ occasional wallowing can keep him down at the prospect of his new found freedom; he’s going to find _friends,_ he’s going to have a new _life._ Maybe he’ll even, like, find someone to _date._

The darkness weighs down on them harder over the next two hours though, and Isak’s body eventually feels stiff from sitting on his broom. Restlessness and exhaustion take up most of his thoughts, replacing the optimistic ones he was having earlier in the journey. Jonas moved from hanging onto dear life around the nape of Isak's neck, to the warm, cushioned satchel full of clothes. Isak can hear Jonas snoring soundly from under the flap of the bag, and Isak hates him just a little bit at that moment.

The landscape below them has turned into a void of black that Isak can barely see anymore, save from the few clusters of lights he can pick out along the way that connect as small towns. Isak’s almost completely given up on a city and is pondering the pros and cons of small-town life – there’s probably cute bed and breakfasts he can work at, the old people will be nice, at least it’s bigger than his village – when a much larger cluster of lights appears in the distance. They’re far away, but there’s so many of them that it instantly piques Isak’s interest and he forgets all about small towns and grandmas.

Isak doesn’t really know what to expect when he gets up close, but whatever his expectations were, the city exceeds it without preamble. The lights of the city twinkle in alignment with each other to create a sense that the buildings might be breathing, blinking, and living. Isak can see the small silhouettes of people wandering through the streets, crossing walkways, and entering into buildings. He can also see the cars, buses, and trains weaving in and out of alleys ways and main streets, their headlights twinkling just like the lights of the buildings. This, plus the way all of it reflects on the gentle ocean waves that surround the city, make Isak’s breath catch in his throat.

All of a sudden, hope weighs down in his chest like it’s a real, concrete thing that Isak could pick up and hold against his body.

“Jonas.” Isak says, hovering above the city. “Jonas!”

Isak watches Jonas poke his head out of the bag, his curls mussed up and matted down in wild ways, just as he asks, “What?” a moment before he looks at the sight in front of them and gasps. “Oh, wow!"

“I know.” Isak says and he can’t keep a smile from tugging onto his face. “I _know.”_

Isak flies down into one of the streets and somehow lands gracefully. Thankfully there’s no one there for him to knock into with his broom, since it’s a late weekday night and more people are enjoying the warmth of their homes than the night life of the city.

The streets light up as he walks toward the center of the city and the night cold bites at his skin even though he’s got his hoodie on. Jonas has his head peaking dutifully out of the top of Isak's bag and he keeps whispering proverbs of wonder to Isak like, _Wow, Isak that building is huge!_ or _Isak that kid’s got a skateboard - can we learn how to skateboard?_ Isak himself has a raw mixture of excitement and nervousness buzzing in his chest like there’s a swarm of fruit flies locked in it. He keeps petting the top of Jonas’ head in assurance rather than saying anything back. He doesn’t want to be that kid wandering around the streets alone, seemingly talking to himself. It's always been a bit of an inconvenience that he's the only human who can hear Jonas' mewling as words.

On their journey, they stumble upon a park that they stop to look in. Even though they can’t see much of anything in the dark, Isak still makes out the vague shape of a church at the far end and the outline of a fountain before it. Isak’s thinking about how beautiful the park might look on a sunny day when he hears the horrible sound of someone violently throwing up.

Isak whips his head toward the sound to find a man hunched over near the park trashcan, presumably puking. However, it seems like he’s missed the trashcan entirely and instead there’s a lot of throw up _surrounding_ the trashcan that's being illuminated by the streetlight. Isak can’t see the man’s face since he’s kneeling with his hands on his knees and dry heaving toward at the ground, but he sure can see the vomit.

Isak hears Jonas go, “What a great introduction to city life: a man violently vomiting on the ground. Cool.”

Isak snickers in response. “We’re not in Kansas anymore.” he remarks and then looks down at Jonas. “You’re the Toto to my Dorothy, Jonas.”

Jonas soaks in this information for a moment, and then shrugs. "I would call myself a bit more of a tin man, or a cowardly lion, but sure, whatever."

Their interaction is interrupted once again by a loud dry heave from the person near the trashcan. Jonas and Isak look up just in time to watch this person all of a sudden sit on the ground, like his body just can’t take kneeling anymore, and fully lie down. His head is against the concrete and everything.

Isak sits and watches him for a moment, thinking how odd the whole thing is.

“You should go check on him.” Jonas tells Isak.

Isak goes, “What?! Why?” and looks down alarmingly at Jonas.

Jonas purrs at him quizzically. “Because he just vomited everywhere and looks like he’s about to sleep on the ground of the park?”

“Those are all reasons exactly why I should not go and help him. What if he kills me?”

Jonas sniffs. “You’re being such a farm boy.” he says and then continues, “Don’t worry I won’t let him kill you.”

Isak scoffs. “Wow, my knight in shining armor, my fucking talking cat. I feel so assured.”

After a few moments of Jonas pushing Isak to go over, Isak does indeed walk to the man on the ground. He finds the man half asleep, eyes closed and lips slightly parted for breath. He smells distinctly like vomit and a heavy amount of fragrance, like he’s just spent a good couple of hours with people who wear a lot of cologne.

“Wake him up.” Jonas hisses from his safe place in the satchel.

Isak sighs and then lightly kicks the man with his foot. “Hey, dude,” he says and, when he gets no response, nudges him with his shoe again, “Hey. are you okay?”

Suddenly the man’s eyes open and he sits up. He takes in a deep breath and looks up to Isak with his brows furrowed.

“Did I fall asleep?” he asks and Isak nods. “Who are you?”

“I was just – uh, I was just standing in the park and I saw you vomit.” Isak explains.

The man slumps over. “Lord, if you even knew the _night I have had,”_ the man says from his place on the ground and then looks up to Isak to continue, _“_ you would understand why I am here at this exact moment in my life.”

When he looks up at Isak, the hood of his jacket falls down and uncovers his close-cropped ginger hair. His eyes keep swimming from place to place on Isak’s face and if Isak needed anymore evidence to convince himself that this man was drunk, he would have it.

“Uh, okay?” is all Isak can think of to respond.

“Ask if he has somewhere we can drop him off.” Jonas hisses from inside the bag, his blue eyes peeking over the edge as he watches the scene play out.

Isak thinks this idea is dumb as shit, but he can’t tell that to his talking cat while another person is around. Well, maybe he can because this dude is super drunk, but, still.

“Uh…” Isak trails off as he looks at this stranger and contemplates what he should do. Eventually he sighs and says, “Do you live around here? I can help you get home.”

The man looks up at Isak after he says that like he’s been saved. He gasps and slurs, “You would do that?”

“Yeah, yeah.” Isak agrees and offers him a hand. “Give me your address and I’ll walk you home. What’s your name?”

The man drunkenly pulls himself off the ground with Isak’s help and then wraps his arms around Isak’s neck to steady himself. “I’m Eskild. Who are _you_?”

“Isak.” he tells Eskild.

For some reason, Eskild finds this the appropriate time to wink at Isak. Even though his impaired motor functions makes the wink comes out as more of a blink, Isak can still recognize the original intent. He has absolutely no idea what it’s supposed to mean, so he ignores it with an, "Uh..."

Eskild happily gives Isak his home address so Isak can plug it into his phone and GPS the way there. Eskild spends much of their time walking with his feet stumbling all over the place even though he has his arms circled tightly around Isak’s neck as he mumbles incoherent sentences. Isak spends much of their time walking giving curt replies to Eskild and internally cursing Jonas for everything in his life. He thinks back to flying above the city and thinks of a version of himself still flying up there, watching the small figure of Isak carry a drunken stranger to his home in the curvy streets in between the buildings.

At one point during their walk to Eskild’s residence, Eskild stops muttering about things Isak has no context for and instead narrows his eyes at the broom Isak is carrying in the hand that is not supporting Eskild at the back. Eskild then looks toward Isak, his face still adorning an incredulous expression.

“Why the fuck do you have a _broom_ in your hand?” he asks.

Isak looks at the broom for a second. “I was cleaning.”

Eskild makes a noise. “Cleaning _what._ The fucking park? I don’t think I have seen a broom in all my years of living. Ever. I use a vacuum. A Dyson, to be exact.”

Isak rolls his eyes. “Good to know.”

Eskild stumbles along and says, “You know what? It is good to know.”

Out of all the things Isak was expecting when they got to Eskild’s house, it was not to find a very homey cottage on the side of the street that has a wonderfully hand painted sign above the door that reads “BAKERY”.

Isak tilts his head in confusion at the store. “Is this it?” he asks Eskild.

Eskild nods in reply. “Ah, yes. My humble abode. My _casa._ My _maison.”_

He stumbles toward the door and pulls out his ring of keys. It takes him a bit longer than a normal person to get the door open, but he is strong in his effort and it pays off.

He beckons Isak inside. “Please, come in. You deserve a reward for helping out the likes of me.”

Isak, who is already deep in this mess and doesn’t have anywhere else to go, walks in.

__

Over the course of making tea for them both, Eskild seems to sober up. His grip on the kettle when he pours the water is not as shaky as before, and when he presents Isak with his tea, his voice sounds steadier.

“So, what’s a kid like you doing in a park late at night? That’s not safe, you know.” as he says this, he takes a sip from his mug and gives Isak a stare. His stare is probably more wobbly than he’d like it to be, but Isak understands the intent.

“I just moved here, actually. I was just looking around.” Isak admits. He’s tired and he figures if Eskild is does try to kill him, his motor functions wouldn’t work properly enough to be successful. Isak’s gut also tells him there isn’t a bad bone in Eskild’s body. So he drinks his tea and talks.

Eskild looks at him expectantly and when Isak doesn’t open up, he puts his cup down. “Well, where are your parents?” he asks, like it’s obvious.

Isak looks down into his tea, watching the milk swirl around. “Uh, this is gonna sound weird, but I’m like – a wizard? And there’s this thing in our culture where we have to leave home when we turn sixteen and find a new place to spread our magic in and well, I turned sixteen a couple weeks ago. So… now I’m here.”

Isak takes a chance and looks up at Eskild only to see that Eskild’s jaw has physically dropped.

“You’re a fucking wizard?” he asks Isak.

Isak holds onto his mug tighter. “Ah, yeah?” he says unsure.

Eskild has to take a second; he looks like his mind has properly been blown. “Oh my God, what? Oh my God. I mean – you know, I used to hear stories about magic when I was little, but I thought you guys were extinct, you know? I’ve never met anyone who can do – _magic._ Oh my God. You’re so cute? You little wizard thing? Oh my God? Am I dreaming?" 

Isak doesn’t know how to deal with that reaction. “I would hope not?” Isak responds.

It’s like Eskild wakes up then and he looks for Isak for the first time. “You’re so young to be living on your own! Did you just get here? Where are you staying?” Eskild’s facial expression has shifted from gobsmacked into paternally concerned in a matter of moments.

“I mean… nowhere. I hadn’t really figured that out.” Isak admits.

Eskild finds this unacceptable. “You – you don’t know? You’re sixteen? Good God, kids these days.” Eskild groans this into his hands as though he is about eighty years old and not a young, early twenties man. He then looks up at Isak like he’s just gotten an idea. “You know what? You can stay here. One of my roommates just moved out and her room is empty. We’ve been looking for someone for weeks, but it just hasn’t work out."

This is a lot for Isak to process. “I don’t… I don’t know if I have the money right now and I –”

Eskild waves him off. “Isak – that’s fine. We’ll figure that out later. Please, just – stay? I don’t want you to be out on the streets alone.” he tells Isak.

Isak finds it fucking incomprehensible that this man is the same one he rescued from sleeping in his own vomit in the park just an hour ago. “I mean, are you sure? I have – I have a cat.”

Eskild looks interested in this. “A cat?” he asks.

Jonas takes his cue and pokes his head out from the bag slung around Isak’s shoulder. Isak scoops him up and out on the table. Eskild finds this whole exchange to be amazing.

“Isak, well you know what? I love pussy, so it’s okay.” he says, and then promptly bursts into laughter to himself. When he collects his composure after he realizes Isak isn’t laughing, he comes back around to say, “That was a joke, Isak. I am very gay. I love your cat though.”

Isak, who is momentarily stunned into silence, has a sneaking suspicion this is how Eskild is even without alcohol. “Uh, yeah. Okay.”

After a good beat of silence where Eskild noisily sips his tea, he finally says, “Come on then, I’ll show both of you to your room.”

Eskild takes them out of the bakery and to the back, up some stairs and into a room that hangs above another part of the house where Isak figures Eskild lives. Eskild opens the door into a living space that is much larger than Isak expected it to be - and much dustier.

The room is pretty barren, with only a bed frame and a made-up mattress, a stove, and a table with a few chairs. There are big, empty spaces in the room where stuff could be placed and probably was, when someone was living here.

Eskild goes, “It’s pretty nice up here, although you might need to clean it. But we can talk about that tomorrow. I’ll help you.” Eskild yawns. “For now, we should both go to sleep.”

Isak nods at him and says, “Thank you. Thank you so much. For doing all this.”

Eskild smiles and Isak realizes it’s the first time he’s seen him really smile. “Hey, you’re the one who picked me off the ground in my vomit. I’ve got to repay you somehow.”

With that, he waves goodbye at Isak and then Jonas respectively, giving Jonas a small wave to match his size, and leaves out the door.

Isak takes a big sigh, the kind that naturally happens at the end of a long, exhausting day.

“Wow.” is all Isak can manage to say.

“Ditto.” Jonas says. “How did we end up here?”

Isak, possibly because of his exhaustion and incapability to believe his own damn life, just laughs.

__

The bed he sleeps on is a bit lumpy and the sheets are a bit dusty, but a bed’s a bed and Isak is too tired to even complain. Jonas, on the other hand…

“If the bed was so dusty and kept making you sneeze, then you’re responsible for that. _You’re_ the one who made me talk to Eskild in the first place.” Isak tells him. This shuts Jonas up sufficiently. "You've been so grumpy lately - usually you're so much more... chill." Isak comments.

Jonas replies with a long suffering sigh and by saying, "Isak, you literally woke me up from a nap yesterday by telling me that we were going to move far away from anything we've ever known and loved - I need some time to regain my chill."

Isak just laughs at him, and pets his head.

When Isak goes down for breakfast, he walks through the unfamiliar house to find his way toward the kitchen he was in last night, only to find someone who is definitely not Eskild making coffee at the stove.

The girl has red hair like Eskild, and she turns around when she hears Isak’s soft footsteps come to a stop behind her. The girl is in a baby blue bathrobe and her face is delicately pretty, but her eyes look, as Isak would described, sufficiently dead inside.

“Oh,” she says and blinks, “You must be Isak. Eskild told me he found us a new roommate.”

Isak smiles a little sheepishly. He was not aware that more people than Eskild lived here. “Yeah, yeah. That would be me.” he replies.

The girl nods. “I’m Linn. Do you want coffee?”

Isak nods while standing there awkwardly with his hands in his pockets. “Sure, yeah. Thanks. Nice to meet you.”

When Jonas peeks out from his place behind Isak’s legs, Linn notices him “You too - oh,” she says and blinks, “Is this your cat? He’s cute. Does he like milk?”

Isak looks down at Jonas, who nods ecstatically in return. Isak looks up at Linn and says, “Sure.”

Something about this makes a small smile appear on Linn’s face as she goes back to making coffee and bustling around the kitchen while Isak sits at the table.

There are a few mere moments of silence where Isak has time to look around the room and notice how nice it is, how homey and lived-in it feels, before Eskild makes his grand entrance into the room.

He’s in a white shirt with an apron tied around his waist, and he brings along the distinct smell of freshly made bread as he walks in. He notices Isak and Jonas sitting at the table and announces, “Linn! Have you met the strays I brought in last night?”

Linn hums in agreement as she rummages through the fridge and takes out a milk carton.

Eskild throws a friendly smile toward Isak’s direction. “How’d you sleep? Is the room okay?”

Isak nods. “The room is great.” he says and smiles back, “Thank you so much.”

Eskild winks at him – a proper, sober wink this time – and says, “Of course. I wouldn’t have thrown you out on the streets to be eaten by the dogs.”

Isak laughs, albeit a bit awkwardly. He’s never been too great at first interactions with people he doesn’t know, especially when they wink at him. Isak looks at Eskild’s clothing choice and asks, “So, you guys actually run a bakery?”

“No Isak, we just have the sign up for shits and giggles. All the bread I make is fake. Everything is a lie.” Eskild tells him, shaking his head sadly. Then, he stares at Isak with a _look._ “Of course we run a bakery, Isak. I just put the first batch of dough in the ovens, who do you think I am?”

Isak laughs. “To be honest, I did not think the drunk guy I met last night would have run a cute bakery.”

Eskild shrugs, like this is a fair assumption. As Linn brings Isak and Eskild their coffees and Jonas a bowl of milk, she scolds Eskild with little heart put into the words, “You were out drunk again?”

Isak nods at her. “I found him in a park after he vomited everywhere.”

Linn sighs, like this is a weight she bears every day of her life. Eskild on the other hand, shrugs like he doesn’t give half a shit.

“Sometimes a man has to party.” is his only explanation. Isak decides not to mention that it was on a weekday in the middle of the week.

Over breakfast, it’s decided that Isak will just work for the bakery rather than pay rent - at least in the beginning.

“You know,” Eskild says through a mouthful of bread roll, “We really need the help. Linn’s started taking classes at University again and she’s almost never here to help me man the store anymore. Isak, it is like God bestowed you upon me just when I needed you.”

Isak, who also has a bread roll in his mouth, just ticks his eyebrows up and shrugs at that.

Linn gets introduced to Isak’s magic from Eskild, who explains that Isak is a wizard in the most exaggerated way possible. Linn seems to understand everything despite Eskild’s assurance that Isak really might be the Great Wizard Merlin.

“That sounds nice.” is all she says to Isak after they’re all done talking about it. He replies with a meek, _Thanks?_

After breakfast, Eskild is adamant about showing Isak the ways of the bakery. “I know you’ve just got here and you want to run wild in the city, but just give me a few hours of your time in the morning rush to show you how to do everything and give me a little help. Then you can be free to run rampant and make friends with other drunk men you meet in the park.”

Isak, who has been given food, water, and shelter by this man, can’t really say no. So he shrugs and says, “Sure.”

Eskild teaches him how he puts the dough on slats and places them into the oven, shows him the different types of bread they make and the different pastries they sell, shows him how the till works, and then sets him behind the register with promises that in twenty minutes, the place will be packed. It's a "test run" as Eskild says.

Oh, how Isak wishes Eskild had been exaggerating to him.

Isak grew up in a little village that consisted of only so many people. He is sure that the massive group people who crowd into Eskild’s bakery at 8:30 a.m. is around the same amount of people in his class at school, and none of them used to try to talk to him all at the same time about buying various loaves of bread.

Thankfully, Eskild occasionally comes in to check on Isak to make sure he’s doing okay, all the while telling the customers about who Isak is.

“Oh, he’s my cousin from the country who wanted to make it big in the city, bless his heart.” he tells all the cooing mothers and winks at Isak. Eskild does a lot of winking.

After a proper hour and a half of Isak fumbling around the bakery, doing things he doesn’t quite know how to do, and talking to several dozen people, finally there is a lull. Isak sits back on his stool and heaves a big sigh.

Jonas, who has become fixated on watching Eskild put the bread in the oven and bake it, finally comes out of his hiding place of the kitchens.

“Rough morning?” Jonas teases as he prances along the counter.

Isak sticks his tongue out at Jonas. “Yeah, not that you would know, since you are apparently worshiped in this household and don’t have to do anything as a cat. Also get your dirty feet off the counter.” Isak pushes Jonas away by putting his own sneakered feet to rest on the counter.

Jonas rolls his eyes at this. “How’s city life treating you, then?” he asks. There seems to be some genuine concern to it, like Jonas might expect Isak to suddenly explode from all the change in his life.

Isak sighs. “Honestly? I haven’t really had time to process it beside the fact that my life is completely unrecognizable from what it was yesterday morning.” Isak takes a big breath in and says, “I should call Eva and tell her I’m okay so she can tell everybody.”

“Isak?” Eskild yells as he peeks his head in and then pauses in confusion, “Who were you talking to? I thought it was a customer but no one’s here.”

Isak and Jonas look at each other before Isak stumbles out, “Uh, uhhh – I was just talking to Jonas.”

Eskild seems to take this as a valid answer and shrugs. “Silly boy. Anyway, thanks for doing the morning shift. It’s the busiest time of the day here, and it’s been hard for me to balance making the food and selling the food at the same time for the past couple of weeks. So, thanks. I know it was a lot to start off with.”

Isak suddenly feels a surge of gratitude toward Eskild. “No – I mean - of course, it’s really no problem. Honestly, thank you for letting me, um, live here. And thanks for not being a murderer.”

Eskild laughs. “I’m the bread murderer. I’ll kill you with carbs.” Isak laughs as Eskild continues with, “Anyway, I just wanted to tell you that you can head off now and do whatever you want. I just really needed help then. We’ll talk about your work schedule and all those things tonight.”

Isak nods at him. “Yeah, of course.”

Eskild gives him a thumbs up and goes to turn into the back room when he suddenly flips around and goes, “Oh, also, be home tonight by a reasonable hour – I don’t want to have to worry about where you are.”

With that, he vanishes.

Jonas gives a snicker. “Looks like you’ve been adopted.”

Isak turns toward Jonas to laugh with him about it, when the door opens and the bell rings, signaling someone’s come in.

 _I can help this one last person before I go,_ Isak thinks, and turns toward the customer.

Isak’s had his fair share of meeting new people this morning. He met a lot of mothers doing their weekly grocery shopping and he met a lot of hearty businessman who laughed gruffly behind their mustaches. There were a few odd ones out, like the girl who came in with her mousey friend behind her and asked for several pastries he had never heard of before. She had pursed her darkly-colored lips pretty harshly at Isak until he called Eskild and asked for help with the order. Eskild ended up smoothing her hard expression by some familiar teasing back and forth, and by the end, the girl had then given him a tip and an unexpectedly sweet smile, saying, _Hope Eskild isn't working you too hard on your first day._

But beside a few instances like that, there had been nobody who really stuck out to him in the crowd of people. Yet, Isak is suddenly sure that if this boy who just walked in had been there this morning, Isak would have remembered him. The boy is tall – taller than Isak – and has on a jean jacket and hoodie combo that looks like something Isak might buy in a store if he were to see it first. There’s something about the boy that instantly makes Isak focus all of his attention onto him.

The boy walks up to the counter and says, “Hello,” just before he smiles a very nice and languid smile that Isak gets a little caught up in for a moment.

“Uh,” Isak mumbles, removing his feet from their resting place on the counter and attempting to look professional once more. “Hi. What would you like?”

The boy hums as his eyes wander from item to item, and then finally back down at Isak’s face. His lips seems to smile instantly when his eyes land back on Isak. “I’ll take one white, two wheat?” he says. As he starts pulling out his wallet, Isak sees him suddenly make eye contact with Jonas, who is laying down at the end of the counter. “Oh, hello there.” the boy says, and goes to scratch Jonas on the underside of his chin. "I didn't know you guys got a bakery cat," his eyes then slide back to Isak, "and a new baker boy."

As Isak’s putting the loaves in bags, he laughs awkwardly.

“Are you new here?” Isak hears the boy ask.

As he turns around to put the bread on the counter in exchange for the boy's money, Isak is met with the boy’s warm smile and kind eyes once again. Isak only realizes that an uncomfortable beat of silence has passed where he was supposed to reply when the boy’s eyebrows start to turn down in confusion.

“Uh, yes!” Isak says, perhaps with too much enthusiasm – _oh my God, what is wrong with me,_ he thinks – and then continues on, “I just moved here and started working here recently.”

Isak thinks _recently_ sounds better than _I_ _literally just started doing all of this this morning, you could probably replace me in this job and already know more things about bread than I do._

The boy hums as he lets Isak give him his change and receipt in his hand. “Well, welcome to our great city and Eskild’s great bakery.” he says, still smiling up at Isak. His smile has this quality to it, like he knows something Isak doesn’t or that there is something Isak isn’t catching on to. This is fitting since that is exactly the way Isak has felt with his whole entire conversation with this boy.

Isak laughs a bit awkwardly in response and hands the boy his bread. The boy somehow manages to carry all three bags under one arm, and as he walks toward the door to leave, he waves goodbye.

“See you around!” he tells Isak in a chipper fashion.

“Bye.” Isak says, waving goodbye back.

As soon as the door shuts, Jonas goes, “Oh my God, what the _fuck_ was that _,_ Isak.”

Isak suddenly flushes and turns toward Jonas. “What?” he asks.

Jonas doesn’t have the time to reply before suddenly Eskild appears out of the woodwork, leaning on the door frame and looking suggestively at Isak.

“Cute, isn’t he?” Eskild asks, and waggles his eyebrows.

Isak makes a noise that sounds a lot like a baby bird squawking as he almost falls off his stool and goes, “What! I – what – no –”

Eskild continues to waggle his eyebrows. “His name is Even. He’s a regular.”

Isak only squabbles more in response and says, “No – I –”

“I heard he broke up with his long-term girlfriend a couple months ago, maybe you could be his rebound.”

Isak yells, “Eskild!” at such a high pitch his voice cracks. The flush on his face doesn’t really help with anything as he exclaims, “I don’t know what you’re talking about!”

Eskild leaves Isak with a wink and a, “Have fun for the rest of your day! Maybe stop buy the grocery store and pick up more milk. Linn’s going to kill that cat of yours with how much milk she’s feeding it already.”

Isak only has enough control over the situation to do something like a huff before he yells back at Eskild’s retreating form, “Stop winking at me! I don’t like it!”

Jonas falls off the counter with how hard he laughs at the whole interaction, and Isak has half a mind to step on him as he stands up to leave.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> just want you all to know that "Jonas mewls." was the worst string of two words i've ever written in all my years of living
> 
> also no one is immune to even's charm and i love writing isak as endlessly awkward and overwhelmed by everything even does
> 
> ALSO also! if you have never seen kiki's delivery service and don't know what the room that isak in this fic/kiki lives in looks like: [it's](http://68.media.tumblr.com/917270201149def00a5d1882383a092b/tumblr_mhr6zzMb1V1qljgf8o10_1280.jpg) [this.](https://ourpieceoftheirworld.files.wordpress.com/2014/08/kiki-s-delivery-service-hayao-miyazaki-25491005-1280-720.jpg) i found it kind of hard to describe so sorry! but i thought i'd include references bc that makes it a lot easier. and if you've never seen kiki's delivery service: go watch it!!! there shouldn't be a lot that will be written in this fic that will spoil the movie for you bc the journey kiki goes on is a bit different than the one i'm writing 4 isak (esp in character development and theme) and like man. what a Feel Good movie
> 
> thanks for reading!!


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i was gonna post this and point out all the things i am unhappy abt with it but that's no fun n i gotta stop that so here this is!!! i hope you all like it!
> 
> sorry it's taken me a bit 2 update, school kicked my ass and i got real sick from being so stressed and now i've got APs (that i am procrastinating) next week!! life is busy busy busy
> 
> love u all! hope everything is going well and hope this chapter is ok! i only know how to type with exclamations!

Living with Eskild and Linn is an experience Isak just frankly doesn’t know how to describe. One would think Isak would be the weird one, since he’s the actual _wizard_ , but how does that describe how often Isak wakes up with Eskild sleeping on the floor of his room hungover more times than not, especially when one considers the fact that when Eskild's bedroom is on the _other side_ of the house. How does the explain how Eskild calls him odd nicknames from anywhere from _pretty boy_ to _my tiny baby jesus._ How does that explain how Eskild also happens to have a lot of loud sex that can be heard from the thin walls of their house, like when Isak goes to the kitchen for a midnight snack and then he is driven out by the loud sounds of moans.

Linn, on the other hand, is a person Isak has stopped trying to figure out. Not only does she sleep practically all of the day, but when she does emerge to help Eskild make pastries for the bakery or watch T.V., she’ll turn to Isak and give weird, odd comments. One time, Isak was helping her beat eggs whites when she sighed suddenly and said, _Eskild keeps telling me about your boyfriend Even. Did Eskild turn you gay?_ Isak's only response is sputtering out a string of alarmed noises.

Despite all of their quirks, on the days the bakery is closed, the three of them band together to take Isak all around the city: to the clocktower, the city center, the beach, all of Eskild’s favorite coffee shops, and so much more. Isak hasn’t found a place in the city that he doesn’t love and he’s pretty sure that he’s in some sort of dream because every part of his life is perfect. From the beautiful city down to the roommates he landed who, while certainly weird, take care of him.

When he calls to tell Eva everything he’s found, she groans with jealousy over the phone.

“A month and a half,” she tells Isak. “A month and a half and then it will be summer and I will come visit you.”

“My room’s big enough for the two of us.” Isak says and laughs as he looks around the barren space still around him. Eskild had helped him clean it fully last week and there are no trails of dust or spiderwebs secretly hiding in the corners of his windows. Jonas, who is curled at Isak’s feet as he talks to Eva on the phone, is more than grateful for this; he kept accidentally stepping in all of them.

“This just reminds me how boring the village is! Especially without you here.” Eva huffs from the other end of the line. “I can’t believe you live in a bakery, in a _seaside city_ , and all without me!”

Isak smiles to himself as he pets Jonas’ back. He can hear the frustration in her voice he knew all too well that feels like distant memory to him now, thankfully. “I know, but you’ll be here soon enough.” He tells her. 

Eva gives a sigh and changes the topic, “Anyway, expect packages with your stuff to arrive soon. I helped your Mom and Dad pack up your room yesterday.”

Just as Eva said, he does get packages full of stuff from his old room in the next day or two, but beside the letter that comes with it and a few occasional calls Isak rarely even has the time to think about or miss his parents or back home.

His mom still refuses to talk to him. This is the only thought of his parents that he thinks about often. It will come creeping into his head while he’s lying at bed at night, the window leaking in cold ocean air and Jonas pressed warmly into his side. He’ll think about the weight of his Mother’s disappointment that settles heavy in his chest and the weight of her silence. The way his father fills up the spaces where she won’t speak like it will make Isak feel softer, less like a failure. The only thought that allows him to sleep is when he imagines the mother he had when he was younger and all of the ways in which she would be proud of him now.

He pushes these thoughts away as he watches Eskild cut open one of the packages with a box cutter. Eskild is the only one who helps him unpack all of his boxes since Linn is deep in a long nap in her room and Jonas has no opposable thumbs.

They work slowly for a while. Isak unpacks and puts away most of his clothes, and finds Eva had packed polaroids and old pictures of them, so he tapes those up on the wall by his bed. After a while of this, Isak steps back and surveys what they've done so far. “This room actually look like someone lives in it,” Isak comments as he puts his hand on his hips. 

Eskild, who is unpacking Isak’s box of books, makes a noncommittal noise as he looks the mess of dishes and cutlery stacked next to the small stove in the room. "I mean, I think you already had that down pat."

“Well I think it’s nice,” Jonas comments from where he’s curled up in a ball on Isak’s blankets. “I like the pictures of you and Eva. Very homey.”

Isak laughs, and he has to hold his tongue in replying, _that's just because you're in love with her._ His thoughts are then interrupted by Eskild.

“Isak…” Eskild’s voice sounds unsure as he trails off, “Isak, what’s this?”

Isak hums in response and turns around to find Eskild, still sitting on the floor with the box of books in front of him, inspecting one specific book in his hands. His eyebrows are knitted together in such genuine concern and curiosity that it befuddles Isak before he even walks over to look at what the book really is.

“It looks very… well, witchy.” is all Eskild says to him before he hands it over.

Isak inspects the book cover just as Eskild had done before. It’s leather-bound and worn at the edges with a cursive title on the front that is so ridiculously loopy it makes it look like a prop from a movie. The title reads _Beginner’s Elixirs and How To Make Them_ and it has a drawing of a potion bottle bubbling with pink liquid on the bottom.

When Isak opens the book, it instantly lets out a sizeable amount cloud of dust and a very poignant old book smell. Isak sneezes on the pages instantly when he cracks the book open.

“Bless you – what is it?” Eskild asks impatiently.

The frayed and yellow pages on the inside match the cover, and Isak finds tiny text telling him that he needs to put one whole cup of daisy petals into his concoction at a low heat in order for his potion to work.

“It looks like… a potion recipe book?” Isak says, still unsure even as he flips through the pages to find more and more drawings of elixirs and concoctions. “Why is this in here? I’ve never seen anything like this in my life. This was supposed to be all of my stuff.”

“Well, it has to be your Mom’s, right?” Jonas supplies, jumping down from the bed and padding his way over toward them. "She's a witch, right?"

“But that doesn’t make sense…” Isak remarks as the book increasingly settles as an uncomfortable weight in his chest, “She doesn’t do magic anymore and she doesn’t want _me_ to do magic anymore, so why would she put this with my stuff? And she’s a psychic – I’ve never seen her make a potion in my life.” 

Jonas does a tiny shrug with his tiny cat shoulders and says, “Maybe she used to do potions, or maybe she didn’t send it.” 

Isak looks at Jonas. “Well, who would have sent it then? My Dad wouldn’t go into the closet she keeps all her magic stuff locked away in. He probably doesn’t even remember it exists.”

Eskild interrupts this conversation with, “Hey, it seems like you guys are in a heated discussion right now, but I just want to clear the air and say: Isak, you have been living in this household for almost three weeks and you didn’t bother _telling me_ that you could _talk to your cat?_ ”

Isak, who is caught off guard by the change in topic, only looks at Eskild sheepishly and goes, “Uhh… sorry?”

Eskild looks a bit ruffled at Isak’s nonchalance. “You’re supposed to tell me things, Isak – that’s how friendship works! You’re supposed to tell me all your wizard boy secrets.” He pouts up at Isak.

Isak runs his fingers along the leather cover in his hand and laughs weakly and shortly. Jonas climbs up onto Eskild to meow in his face and Isak puts the book down on his desk to be looked at later.  
__

Except Isak can’t stop thinking about the book the whole day. He also can’t stop being a bit mad that it’s with him. It feels like – it feels like the only person who could have sent it is his mother, which is bullshit, because if she had wanted him to learn magic she should have _taught him_ , not sent him a dingy book she’s had for years only after he’s left home.

Even still, he can’t stop thinking about it. When he goes to sleep that night, he gets under the blankets and keeps his lamp on so he can open the book and try to find some understanding in it. 

There’s hundreds of recipes, most of them a bit gibberish to anything Isak knows, but he also finds soft scrawl in the margins, the crossing out and rewriting of words, home brew recipes on the back of blank pages – and then a note written in the front side of the book addressed to his Mother.

The handwriting of the letter is different than the one Isak finds written all over the pages inside. This one is almost an illegible cursive that is in a dark ink that stains through the page, and the only thing Isak can make out at first is the signature of his Grandfather at the bottom. His Grandfather’s foreword addresses the book to Isak’s Mother, says that it had been one of his most prized possessions when he was learning how to make potions, but that it now belonged to her.

The scribbles of pencil all over the pages must belong to his Mother then, Isak thinks. All Isak can think of when he sees mother’s writings throughout the book is a younger version of herself, a kinder one, a softer one, with long, fair hair and gentle hands. A girl who laboriously studied this book from cover to cover for months and months to make her father proud.

Somehow, Isak ends sitting at his small table at two in the morning with a mug full of crushed up daisies and baby’s breath he picked from outside, waiting for his kettle to steam so he can pour hot water into the cup. In the book, this recipe requires an actual potions kit and bunsen burner, among many other things that are professional that Isak doesn’t have. He doesn’t even know exactly what impulse he followed to get to this point, but the kettle starts screaming as the steam shoots out and Isak gets up quickly to pour it on his flowers.

The sound startles Jonas, and there’s a groggy, “What are you doing?” that comes from the direction of the cat-sized lump under Isak’s covers.

“Just making tea. Go back to sleep.” he tells Jonas as his finger slides down the length of the page, following instructions.

_Once your water is hot enough, pour it over the herbs you’ve collected. While doing this, start to swirl your index finger in circles above the concoction, as though it was a spoon you were mixing all the ingredients with, and say the incantation cadunt in lectulo. Once you are a skilled enough potion master, you will be able to summon incantations without physically saying them!_

Isak cringes a bit at the incantation part. Even though he’s only in a room with himself and his sleeping cat, it still feels a bit ridiculous to fling his finger around and say gibberish. 

Yet, as he pours the hot water into the mug filled with crushed up flowers, he does swirl his finger around and softly breathes out, “Cadunt in lectulo.” into the night.

Isak isn’t quite prepared for it for the bright, beautiful color the contents in his mug turn. As he pours the hot water in, the water starts to mix around and all of the sudden the flowers dissolve, dispensing a sparkling, rich blue into the water that glitters even in the dark of the night. 

Isak peers down at it with hesitant breath and an unsure gaze until he realizes he probably has to drink it in order to understand if it fully works. He glances at the recipe page again. _Sleeping Draught_ is what the title says. Isak checks the clock; it’s almost two thirty in the morning. Isak sighs and thinks, _well, there’s no better time but now._

It tastes like the medicine his father used to give him as a kid and Isak scrunches up his face in disgust as he puts the mug back down, still half full with potion. Immediately his eyes start to droop down on themselves and his mouth goes cottony. When Isak walks toward his bed, his limbs feel languid and heavy like lead.

Isak only comes to from sleep when he feels a soft nudge on his face. He opens his eyes slowly, since they feel like they’ve been shut for years, and there are small rays of sunlight that leak through the open window that lay across Isak’s eyes like they’re trying to blind him.

He blinks once and his vision clears to see Jonas’s fuzzy black form peering down at him. His pink nose sniffs Isak’s hair and when Isak groans, Jonas looks at his face.

“I woke up this morning to find you asleep and drooling on the floor, right next to the bed. What the fuck are you doing?” Jonas asks him. If only cats had a full range of expressions, Isak thinks, then Jonas would certainly look even more confused.

Isak lifts his head off the wood floor and wipes his mouth from drool. “I think I figured out how to make potions.” Isak tells him, his voice slurring from sleep still.

Jonas sighs, but it sounds fond in a way. “What am I going to do with you?” he asks, and nudges his forehead against Isak’s hand before Isak scratches him on the head.

__

When he tells Eskild and Linn about it that morning, he doesn’t expect Eskild to immediately want to monetize his abilities.

Eskild has half a piece of toast in his mouth but he’s gesticulating wildly at the table, as though Isak has reinvigorated a fire inside of Eskild’s mind. “Isak! This is perfect, are you kidding me? This is a big city that’s forgotten about magic – if we sell potions people will flip their shit!” Eskild looks at him from across the table with such an enthusiastic look, Isak can’t help but smile a tiny bit. “Do you want to do it?”

Isak thinks for a moment and then lets out a sigh. “I mean – I literally just started learning. I don’t know if they’ll be that good.”

“You said your sleeping one worked on you though, right?” Eskild asks.

Isak pushes his eggs around his plate aimlessly and he says, “Well, yeah, but it worked too well. I literally didn’t even make it to the bed. I have to – I have to work on making them better.”

Eskild nods. “Well, once you feel comfortable, do you want to sell them? You’d get most of the money, and then some would go to me and Linn, and the rest would go toward paying your rent.”

Isak, though he feels so unsure about his magical abilities, can’t find many negatives to the situation. Plus, he still does have to manage rent every month, and he’d rather that would come from potions than him sitting at the front counter for hours, bored out of his mind. 

“Yeah… yeah, okay.” Isak says and looks up just in time to see Eskild smile. “But it probably won’t be for a while.”

Linn hosts her fork with bacon on it up into the air weakly as she goes, “Woo!”

Eskild is so excited about Isak’s new abilities that he looks up potion kits and the next week a big package comes containing several pots, glass cups, and bunsen burners (Eskild tells him, _I read that if you get good enough at elemental magic you can just produce fire, but you seem like a one trick pony boy Isak, so I thought these were the safest bet)_. Isak is, suffice to say, a bit overwhelmed by it but more grateful than anything. He tells Eskild he shouldn’t have, and Eskild shrugs, saying it was an “investment”.

Isak soon finds himself practicing potions all of the time, though usually it’s still with his shitty coffee mugs and mushed flowers because he’s afraid to touch the nicer things Eskild got him in case he blows them up. While he’s had a few elixirs that have turned out wrong and even one that gave him the hiccups for forty-eight hours, for the most part Isak finds most of it to come naturally to him. Making the potions is relaxing and they always create bud of happiness in his chest when he nails one on the head.

“Your grandpa would probably be proud.” Jonas tells him from his position on the other end of the counter. They're in the front of the shop, waiting around for customers to come in. Jonas has got his black tail swinging off the polished wood of the counter, back and forth like a clock, as Isak mushes lavender and rosemary into one of the plastic cups from the kitchen, making shoddy attempts at potions to pass the time. Jonas wrinkles his nose at the vigor Isak is smashing the flowers in with. “Actually, maybe not.”

“Heeey,” Isak says, in mock offense, “Don’t judge me. I made that great healing potion last night.”

Jonas lets out a sniff. “Whatever you say.”

The mid-morning air leaks in through the open windows of the shop and Isak can smell the last batch of bread Eskild's just started to bake for the lunch rush. Isak has been manning the counter since the bakery opened – his usual shift these days – and has found that a great way to waste the lull that happens in between breakfast and lunch rush is to practice potions. 

_You should find water from the nearest creek, boil it to sterilize it*, chill it once more, and then use it as the liquid base for this Positive Potion.  
*Check page 12 for the Sterilizing Guide._

“Jonas,” Isak says as he gestures his plastic cup toward his cat, “Would you mind taking this into the kitchen and filling it up with cold water?”

Jonas huffs at this, “I’m not really sure all those great witches made their potions with plastic cups and tap water.”

Isak just looks at him and gestures to the cup he’s holding out once more. With one great, big sigh, Jonas takes it his mouth and jumps along to the kitchen.

Isak leans his stool back and rests against the bread cabinet behind him, his head tipped back to look at the ceiling. Isak hates this part, the boring silence that inhabits the store for hours, where the only person to keep him company is Jonas - Jonas, who doesn't even keep him company most of the time in favor of sleeping.

As Isak stares at the ceiling and attempts to find shapes in the rough bumps of paint, the bell above the door rings, signalling that someone’s come probably to buy too many loaves of bread for them to carry by themselves. Isak lets his stool fall back on it’s four pegs and his body tip upright with it.

Isak instinctively lists off, “Welcome! What can I do for you today?” just as he sees the tall, languid stature of a boy with a bandanna wrapped around his blonde hair and immediately registers his face as the boy who came in the first day he was working. Eskild had called him Even. Isak blinks. “Hi.”

Even’s smile spread across his face in a soft, warm way. “Hi.” he says back and nods his head down at Isak.

Isak’s only seen this boy once more since the first time he came in, and he had come during rush hour so Isak had no time to think about anything beyond the fact he recognized him.

“Uh, what can I do for you today?” Isak asks, tapping his fingers softly against the wood counter and smiling up at Even.

Even hums as he thinks, a nice sound, and Isak has enough time to appreciate the way Even’s face looks in concentration and how pretty his eyes are.

Isak then internally screams as he runs over the fact he just thought about _how pretty this guy’s eyes were._

“Are you okay?” Isak hears Even ask with a smile to his voice. “You seemed dead for a second.”

Isak quickly refocuses his attention and retreats from his inner embarrassment. “Sorry – yeah, it’s just been a long day. We don’t get a lot of people around this time. It makes it boring.” he rambles.

Something about this quirks a smile from Even’s lips. He then continues to tell Isak the items he wants, and as Isak packs them in a bag, for some reason he starts asking Isak questions.

“You said you were new, right?” he asks.

Isak feels his face flush as he nods. “You remember that?”

Even just smiles and shrugs. “Where are you from?”

Isak looks down at the pastries he’s wrapping. “Uh, just a small town in the countryside.”

“And you decided to move here for the city, then?” Even asks, opening his wallet to get the money to pay Isak. 

“Kind of. It was the nearest big city. I just… stumbled upon it first and decided to stay.” Isak explains, putting the last of Even’s items into a bag for him to carry.

Even seems a bit bemused by this idea. “‘Stumbled?’” He asks and then gives Isak a shameless once over, “But you look like a school student. You look young.”

Isak quirks his head to the side as he scoffs. “So do you.” he tells Even, who only laughs in response. Isak thinks about the easiest way to tell his hot boy customer that Isak's a wizard, but decides there’s no easy way to do it. He should just start wearing a shirt around that says, _Yes, I’m a Wizard._ “Uh, yeah, it’s like a family tradition. I come from a family of, like, witches and wizards, and when you turn sixteen you have to –”

“Oh, move cities, right, yeah,” Even finishes for him. Isak is so shocked by this interruption that he looks up from the cash register to find Even’s eyes sparkling in a way Isak couldn’t described with all the words in the world. Even continues, “You’re a wizard?” he asks, “Like in Harry Potter?”

This causes such an unexpected burst of laughter from Isak’s chest that he’s startled himself by it.

Isak nods. “Something like that.” he says, and he hates himself a little bit for how he has to physically bite his smile back down.

“That’s so cool!” Even exclaims, staring at Isak with a dead set gaze. “I once watched a documentary on magic traditions, and that’s all I really know about it, but – I don’t know, that’s just so cool. I've heard a couple stories hear and there, though, about witches and wizards.” His smile at the end is sheepish and soft.

Isak stacks all the pastries and loaves in Even’s bag expertly as he laughs, albeit a bit awkwardly. “Yeah, it’s alright. Can’t complain.” he says.

At this moment Jonas comes trotting back in, and despite the fact he has the rim of a cup in his mouth, he loudly yells, “Do you know how long it took me to turn that tap on? Do you know how hard it is to carry this full cup with only my mouth, Isak? It literally would have been ten times easier for you to do this than me –” He only stops when Isak squats down to take the cup that’s now full of water from his mouth.

Even peers over to see what all the noise is about. “Wow,” he says, grinning down at Jonas, “that’s a loud cat.”

Isak rolls his eyes as he stands back up and places his cup on the counter. “Like you wouldn’t believe.” he tells Even.

Even eyes the cup. “What is that?”

The plastic, see-through cup is now full of water and has Isak’s shitty, smashed ingredients floating desperately around in it. It looks like something a five year old made as a play-pretend potion.

Isak puts his hands on his hips and looks at it. “Uhh,” he says, and hears Jonas snigger from below him. “A potion?”

Even looks at him with a tilt of his head, but there’s a hint of a smile on his face that makes the whole action look… fond. “Are you sure you’re a wizard?” He teases with shrewd eyes.

Isak's face is red when Eskild comes bustling into the room in from the kitchens with the next batch of bread. He calls for Isak, but as soon as he sees Even, his entire expression changes.

“Oh, Even!” Eskild says and smiles devilishly, “I haven’t seen you in the longest time! Not since I’ve put this boy out here to do all the work.” as he says this, Eskild hip checks Isak, and then moves behind him to restock his bread.

Eskild slides in his bread tray, and then turns around. There is a look in his eye that Isak is suddenly very afraid of. Eskild sees Jonas on the floor and picks him up, holding him against his chest; Jonas, however, is very caught of guard from this action, and his eyes bug out as he lets out a surprised meow.

Eskild starts petting Jonas like he’s doing some sort of Godfather parody. “Tell me, has Isak been doing a good job as the counter boy?” he asks Even.

Even lets out a laugh at this and looks at Isak. “I think he’s doing great.” he says and then looks back at Eskild.

Eskild beams. “He’s going to start selling potions here, you know. In case you wanted to drop by when those are in stock. He’s a wizard, you know.” Eskild brags, sounding a lot like a soccer mom who is trying to tell the world about his child’s talents.

At the mention of potions, Even immediately looks down at the pathetic cup filled with water Isak still has sitting on the counter. Even raises his eyebrows, amused, and looks up at Isak. “I’ll be waiting on the edge of my seat, honestly.”

This rustles a genuine giggle out of Isak, and then he’s suddenly a little bit embarrassed that he outright giggled just because a boy made a joke.

Eskild, however, seems pleased by this whole thing. On the other hand, Jonas seems less than impressed with his position pressed against Eskild’s chest. He wiggles out successfully and trots into the back room.

The bell above the door jingles again, and suddenly the shop is full of a few teenage girls who are chattering away with each other. “I mean did you hear how she sounded on the phone?” Isak hears one of the girls say, “She didn’t seem like herself.”

Eskild’s gaze directs toward the three customers. “Hey girls.” he calls and waves at them with his most Eskild smile.

One of them marches toward the counter and as Isak sees her dark lipstick matching with her black hijab, he suddenly remembers her as a usual customer. 

“Eskild,” she says, her face set with a determination that frightens Isak a bit, “we’re worried about Noora.”

Eskild sighs in defeat at this and puts his hands on his hips. “You all know I’ve tried talking to her and telling her to come home, but she just won’t leave him.”

One of the girls – the mousy one with shiny platinum hair – steps up beside her friend and confronts Eskild further while their third friend sucks on a lollipop and stares at Isak.

Isak, in an attempt to get away from all of that, turns back to Even. Even turns away from the girls at the same time Isak does and they make a sudden eye contact. At this, Isak looks away and realizes the only thing he has left to do is give Even his receipt.

“Uh,” Isak stammers and then holds out the tiny piece of paper, “here you go.”

Even looks at him for a moment before taking the receipt, and there is a beat of awkward silence between them before Even says, “Could you help me carry this out to my bike?” and gestures toward the bag full of bread he bought.

Isak thinks about the fact that Even has both of his hands free and could definitely carry this bag himself before he says, “Yeah, of course,” and takes the bag into his own arms. “I’ll be back.” he tells Eskild, who nods toward Isak for a brief moment before his attention turns back toward the group of girls who seem rather heated.

Even holds the door open for Isak to walk through and immediately Isak is met with the sudden soothing sea breeze. It tousles his hair and reminds small moments from his childhood, when his mom and his dad drove three hours one weekend to take him to see the ocean.

Isak sighs and thinks about something else. “You know, sometimes I forget there’s a world outside this bakery.”

Even laughs as he saunters toward his bike that’s locked to a street lamp. “Is Eskild forcing you into child labor? Should I call the cops?” 

Isak dramatically shakes his head. “He’s imprisoned me. Only three weeks in this town and I’ve barely seen a quarter of what the city has to offer because I’ve been _imprisoned._ ” He lowers the heavy bag of bread into the cart hoisted on the front of Even’s bike.

“What’s your name?” He hears Even ask and looks up to see his face.

The sun is perfectly outlining the portrait of Even’s smiling face, lighting up the stray blonde hairs that have untucked themselves from his banana. Isak has a very strong momentary impulse to kiss him suddenly, for no reason at all except that he seems beautiful. 

Isak’s hands tighten around the wicker bike basket and he quickly thinks of something else. “Uh, Isak.” he says, “Isak Valtersen.”

Even tilts his head, like Isak is some foreign creature he’s not quite sure exists and says, “Well, Isak Valtersen, if you ever need someone to show you around, I know a few places.”

“Only a few, though?” Isak asks, the corners of his mouth turning up.

Even smiles back and there’s a laugh on the tip of his voice when he replies, “Only a few, yeah, but I still think you’d like them. Certainly none of them are bakeries filled with wizards.”

“Thank God, I’m getting tired of those.” Isak says, and he looks down to his feet for a moment before he continues with, “I might – I might take you up on that offer.”

“Yeah?” Even asks, a full-blown grin suddenly apparent on his face as he tilts his head down toward Isak more.

Isak nods and goes, “Yeah. Yeah.”

Even smiles at him once more and then rummages in his pockets for something. He produces a black marker and gently takes Isak’s hand into his own. As Even scribbles something onto Isak’s palm, Isak tries not to completely freak out that their hands are touching. Isak doesn’t know why he thinks this is a big deal, but with each second that passes, he feels more stressed and stressed out about it.

Even drops his hand and gives him a dimpled grin as he swings his leg over the other side of his bike. He nods once at Isak and says, “I’ll see you.” before he’s taking off and gliding down the street, into the heart of the city.

Isak watches his retreating figure and sighs. He looks down his palm and finds a phone number there, marker bleeding into the small cracks of his skin. Suddenly, he laughs at the cliche of it all. The sun warms the muscles in his shoulders and back and the breeze counteracts the sun on his skin. For a moment, he thinks about the parallel universe Isak who didn’t leave, who doesn’t wake up to the smell of ocean spray and fresh baking bread every morning, who doesn’t get to meet new people everyday, who doesn’t believe he has any magic left in him, who doesn’t have the phone number of a boy with a nice smile written on his hand, and he thanks God or whoever is out there that he is not that Isak.

–

“Who were those girls from earlier?” Isak asks Eskild after dinner that night. Linn keeps swatting his hand away from the icing she’s making for the bakery cupcakes.

Eskild is sitting at the table, scrolling through his phone and drinking wine. “Hm?” he hums.

Linn swats Isak’s hand away from the icing once more and with a pointed look, Isak slinks back toward the dinner table to sit across from Eskild. “The girls who came into the bakery. The ones who came in after Even.”

Eskild’s interest piques and he looks up at Isak with shrewd eyes. “Ooo, _Even._ ” Eskild sings.

Isak rolls his eyes and leans back in his chair. “Eskild, who were the girls?” He asks.

Eskild takes a sip of his wine once more, “Oh, they’re friends with our old roommate.” at the mention of this old roommate, Eskild sighs mystically, “Oh, _Noora._ She wasn’t a stinky as you are.”

As Eskild glares at him, Isak shrugs. “But she didn’t do magic, now did she?”

Eskild throws the nearest dish towel at him. “Don’t you dare disgrace her name in this house like that, you devil.”

From across the room, Linn supplies, “Eskild is still in denial that she’s not coming back.”

“She _will_ – or well, she _should_ – you know, she’s unhappy living in that city with that boy. Sana told me that Noora sounded awful to her on the phone and every time she calls with us, Linn, doesn’t she just sound sad? And lonely?” Eskild looks distraught at the idea that this girl might be upset.

“Why did she move out if she’s not happy then?” Isak asks.

Eskild turns back toward him and frowns. “She found a boy,” he says as he starts to play with the frayed edges of their kitchen tablecloth, “and that boy told her she should move in with him in a city two hours from here, and she’s convinced she loves that boy –”

“Eskild, Noora does love him.” Linn reminds him.

“Well, she’s been telling me that she rarely sees him, and that she has no friends, and that basically her life is shit – so maybe loving that boy wasn’t good enough.” Eskild huffs and frowns down at the table. “You’d like her, Isak.” he says suddenly.

Isak’s brows furrow. “Why?”

Eskild shrugs. “I don’t know, I just have the feeling you would.” Eskild sighs a big, big sigh, and then changes the topic, “So, anyway – Even.”

Isak groans. “No.” he tells Eskild.

Eskild wiggles his eyebrows “But _Even_.” he says as he takes Isak’s hand from across the table and flips it over to reveals the phone number.

Isak has to physically lock Eskild out of his room in order to dodge a conversation about Even. “I don’t know what you’re talking about!” Isak shouts to Eskild through his door. “Leave me alone!”

He hears Eskild sigh again. “Isak! He’s so cute! We have to talk about it!”

Eskild sits outside his door with his full glass of wine like he's some paparazzi waiting for a celebrity. It's only when Isak gets up in the middle of the night to go to the bathroom does he almost step on Eskild, who is drunk, sleeping, and still right outside his door like a doormat. 

Isak accidentally steps on his face and never hears the end of it. 

"If you would just tell me about your new boytoy --" Eskild yells after him.

"No!" Isak yells back, shutting the bathroom door.

Eskild's words of, "Isak, I can only be your Love Guru if you let me!" are muffled by the bathroom door, but still heard by Isak.

When Isak gives no response, he hears Eskild heave a wayward sigh and start walking up to his own room. Isak washes his hands, careful not to wash Even's number off just yet, and returns to his warm bed. He has to push Jonas over in order to get back under the covers, but as Isak rests under the comfort of his blankets, with the sea breeze coming in through the window, he falls asleep as easily as ever.


End file.
